On the variability of temperature profiles in the stratosphere: Implications for validation

International audience Defining space-time collocation criteria for the validation of measurements requires the information about natural variability of geophysical parameters. In this paper, we analyzed the variability of the small-scale structure of temperature fields in the stratosphere using tem...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Sofieva, Viktoria F., Dalaudier, Francis, Kivi, R., Kyrö, E.
Other Authors: Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Service d'aéronomie (SA), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: HAL CCSD 2008
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Online Access:https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00344904
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00344904/document
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00344904/file/Sofieva_et_al-2008-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1029/2008GL035539
Description
Summary:International audience Defining space-time collocation criteria for the validation of measurements requires the information about natural variability of geophysical parameters. In this paper, we analyzed the variability of the small-scale structure of temperature fields in the stratosphere using temperature profiles from radio-soundings at Sodankylä (vertical resolution ∼10 m) with a small time difference between sonde launches. We found that the small-scale structures in temperature profiles become different when the horizontal separation of measurements exceeds 20–30 km. The set of the collocated temperature profiles has allowed obtaining experimental estimates of the horizontal structure function of temperature fluctuations. The spectral analysis of the profiles has shown that vertical wavenumber spectra of temperature fluctuations are similar, even for profiles separated significantly in space and time (a few hundreds of kilometers, a few hours). Implications of these results for validation of high-resolution profiles are discussed.